For all those small online business owners, I want you to take a few minutes and think about your very best customers.
What makes them your best? If it because they constantly buy from you, is there a way for you to increase their worth to you even more? Could you perhaps create a membership site for them to join? Could you offer them coaching? The very best business owners recycle their customers.
They are not happy with 1 single sale per customer.
Their goal is to turn each customer into a repeat buyer, or at the very least, something that upgrades their investment into your company.
Let's take a look at the different kind of customers an online business can have, and how important it is to graduate each customer to the next level: The Prospect: This is the person that clicks through from your advert to your website.
They have shown slight interest in what you have to offer, but as yet, they haven't earned you any income.
Most websites' goal is to turn this person into a "First Time Buyer" but a real businessman wants to turn them into something else first.
The Lead: This is the most important part of your business.
A lead is different from a prospect because they have elected to give you their contact details.
I have covered how to do this in other articles, but put simply, you should have a form people can fill out to give you their email in exchange for something free! Being able to contact a lead allows you to bring them back to your site for free.
You don't have to spend money on advertising because they have already told you that they are interested in purchasing from you.
You simply need to email them and get them back for you to sell them something.
The First Time Buyer: You have finally turned their "no" into a "yes" and your customer has bought something from you.
Their money is in your bank account, and you are happy.
This is where most people stop working.
They let the customer leave and try and get a new one.
Wrong! The First Time Buyer has already shown that they are interested in what you are selling.
Instead of trying to find new people to sell to, you should be trying to sell something else to people that have already shown an interested in you! You should be trying to turn them into a "Repeat Customer".
You are able to do this by offering other related products, or perhaps by offering a more in-depth product that the one they previous bought.
The Repeat Customer: This is unknown territory for most businesses.
They are quite happy to have 1 sale per customer and leave it at that.
You know better now.
Getting only 1 sale is like settling for only a kiss from the prettiest girl at school and then walking away, even though you know she goes all the way.
The repeat customer buys from you because of loyalty.
Perhaps your product really worked for them, perhaps they enjoyed your customer service, or perhaps they found you credible.
Whenever you create a new product, they are the first ones to buy.
All you need to do is email your repeat customers with an update about your new product, and they buy without thinking.
This should be your number one goal.
Your website, product creation, or affiliate promotions should be based on building prospects to leads to first time buyers to repeat customers.
For your website to start doing this, it needs to collect emails or phone numbers.
For your product creation to do this, you need to start adding more in-depth products.
If you are offering a quit smoking e-book, offer an audio tape to list to, then upgrade to a membership site.
For affiliate products, you need to find more "like" products you can promote than are better and better each time.
Once you master upgrading your customers to "Repeat Customers" you will turn a couple of thousand dollars a year business into a couple hundred thousand dollar business.
Good Luck!